Sunday, September 20, 2015

I'm not entirely sure I like this derashah enough to use it. Not for any reason I can pinpoint, except perhaps that it feels educational rather than inspirational. Thoughts?
-

Orthoprax
Disillusionment

The
following comes from a blog written by a shul rabbi a few years ago:[1]

My first rabbinic position
was as an assistant rabbi…. The rabbi [asked me] to daven Mussaf for the shul
on the second day of Rosh ha-Shana. I was flattered… I went home, almost
running the whole way, to tell my wife the good news… I immediately began
practicing. I got tapes of various chazzanim and spent hours each day
memorizing the tunes. I recorded myself so that I could hear how I sounded… My
wife was enlisted to listen to Mussaf, over and over again. I had a friend in
Yeshiva who was something of a Chazzan, and we spent time on the phone going
over each tune I intended on using. In the end, I knew the entire Mussaf by
heart, no small feat.

Finally, the day came and I
would like to think that I acquitted myself well… I was, however, surprised at
the comments by the congregation. Everyone I met complimented the davening, but
I was startled to discover that although each congregant focused on something
different—a particular tune or tefilah—they, almost uniformly, included
a variation on, “and we got out so early” or “it was so quick.”

At the time I didn’t know if
they were being polite – perhaps they didn’t really enjoy it and that was all
they could come up with. Over time, however, I learned that my congregants
weren’t sugarcoating their praise or trying to come up with at least one
redeeming quality from my Mussaf. Rather, the most important factor for most
everyone during the Yomim Noraim, almost uniformly, was to make sure they were
home by noon.

The Community
we don’t seek

I think
there was a flaw in the derashah I gave on Rosh HaShanah, and I don’t mean the
fact that it lasted more than 10 minutes, and we didn’t make it home by noon. I
believe the vision I presented from Rav Yerucham Levovitz, Rav Chaim of
Volozhin and Rav Moshe Cordovero[2] was incomplete,
because I left the impression that so long as we create community and bear
the burdens of others with them, we have succeeded as Jews.

That sort
of community is important – but it is only a partial job description,
because that sort of community can easily become corrupted into what that
assistant rabbi experienced:

·A culture of observance can become a culture
of rote, of what Yeshayah[3]
called מצות אנשים מלומדה, trained practice rather than inspired
action, just because these behaviours have been the norm forever.

·A community in which people join together for
mitzvot can become a community of peer pressure, in which people do
right only because deviating would carry a social price.

·A community which refines and hones religious
practice can become a community of rules and ritual, without
spiritual depth.

Certainly,
Jewish communities should not exile people who currently observe by rote, who
are influenced by peer pressure, and who follow rules without seeing meaning in
them. But when community becomes all about doing as the herd does, then
we fail the promise of unity. To my mind, Torah is a set of blueprints vouchsafed
to us for the sake of shaping souls who personally connect with Gd as Step
One, and who communally carry forth that Image of Gd into this world
as Step Two.

Always, one should live in Israel, even in a
city which is mostly idolatrous, rather than live outside of Israel even in
a city which is mostly Jewish, for anyone who lives in Israel is as though he
has a relationship with Gd, and anyone who lives outside of Israel is as though
he has no relationship with Gd…

Let’s leave aside the most controversial part, the assertion that one
can have a relationship with Gd only in Israel; that’s a good topic for another
time. But look at the second-most-controversial part – that I must move to a
place where I can connect with Gd, even if that means living in an עיר שרובה עובדי כוכבים, an
idolatrous city!

When I taught this passage in a shiur several weeks ago, one of the
participants challenged me. What about all the ways in which Judaism places
such a powerful emphasis on living among good influences, and avoiding bad ones!

·The Torah presents the
dangers of living in Egypt with Avraham and Sarah, among the Philistines with
Yitzchak and Rivkah, and near Shechem with Dinah. Yosef tells his brothers to
live in Goshen, not among the Egyptians.

·The gemara records rabbinic
decrees meant to encourage Jews to live away from bad influences,[5] to
avoid joint meals and drinking,[6] and
so on.

·Rambam rules that a Jew who
lives among people who are bad influences is required to move![7]

How,
then, can the gemara tell me to go live among idolaters, in order to
reside in a place where Gd is found?

And
so I contend that before the Step Two that is Jewish Community, we need Step
One: Personal relationships with Gd. This is how we avoid what that rabbi
described, a world of Jews whose worship is rote.

Where do we find Gd?

As Rabbi
Korobkin noted on Shabbos Shuvah, different people achieve Step One in
different ways. To flesh that out:

·Some people connect with Gd when hiking in the woods
and appreciating our world;

·Some people connect with Gd when learning Gd’s Torah;

·Some people connect with Gd when walking where our
ancestors walked, in Israel;

·Some people connect with Gd when listening to music,
or meditating and stripping away the noise buzzing around us;

·Some people connect with Gd by channelling their own
Image of Gd and putting it to work in helping other people;

·Some people connect with Gd when engaged in activism
and community leadership;

·Some people connect with Gd when speaking directly to
Gd of their experiences and dreams in davening.

Hopefully,
all of us evolve and mature over the course of our lives, and find that even
activities which were anti-spiritual in our youth can become meaningful and
fulfilling later on. But each of us must be capable of finding something for
Step One - and then using it to inform the community we construct in Step Two.

·Then we can construct a community that remembers its
connection with Gd and agrees to become responsible for each member,
great and small, under the banner of ערבות, as part of the collective commitment we
made to Gd when we crossed the Yarden.[8]

·Then we can construct a community that testifies
eternally to the contours of its covenant with Gd;[9] that
will wear tefillin in 2015 matching tefillin unearthed from 2000 years earlier;
that will live in far-flung, long-severed communities and yet read a sefer
torah that remains eerily isometric; that will value their shared national
connection with Gd beyond ties of geography, ethnicity and even ideology.

·Then we can construct a community that is loyal to its
relationship with Gd, and shapes its Torah observance in a way that is
true to that relationship.[10]

Yom
Kippur

Yom Kippur
is a day of both Step One and Step Two.

Yom
Kippur is a grand day for Step Two: Community with Others. The Jew dare not be a pious
hermit on Yom Kippur. At Kol Nidrei, we rescind communal vows, welcoming even
the ex-communicated back among us. We stand before Gd together.

But first,
Yom Kippur establishes Step One: Community with Gd. We do not eat, we do not bathe,
we do not wear makeup, husbands and wives are apart, it’s all about focusing on
Gd. We recite viduy, privately specifying our mistakes from the past year. It
is a personal conversation with Gd.

On Yom
Kippur we recognize the importance of community – but we assert that there is
no Jewish community without Gd at the centre of each individual life, and we
create the external circumstances which will make a focus on Gd simpler.

Yizkor,
and beyond

Yizkor,
especially, blends these two steps:

·We invoke the memory of those who created our Jewish
world. Victims of the Shoah. Valiant founders and defenders of the State of
Israel. Parents and other relatives. Yizkor is a time of profound
community.

·But at the same time, people recite their Kel Malei
and ask Gd to remember as we do. Bereavement could be all about personal
loss, and not a religious experience – but Yizkor makes it about Gd. Yizkor is
a moment of locating Gd within grief.

When
we put back the Torah after Yizkor, and begin Musaf, let us retain that
blend of the two steps. Let us stand as a community of human beings, daven as a
community, sing as a community. But let us also retain that Yom Kippur focus on
the private union with Gd, even outside the Land of Israel, to ensure that our
prayers and songs are not מצות
אנשים מלומדה, but are centred on the Inspiration for it all.

Derrick
Coleman

One last
note, which might take the level of dialogue somewhat out of the rarefied
spiritual atmosphere we associate with Yom Kippur, but which I hope you will
find as meaningful as I do:

It can be
hard to detach ourselves from the world around us, and experience a union with
Gd. We are surrounded by neighbours and friends and relatives here. We get
distracted, and pausing to re-focus is challenging. And perhaps we have a
history of Yom Kippur davenings which did not reach those heights, telling us cynically
that this day won’t be any different.

The other
day, I saw a video[11] that
really resonated with me on this point. It featured an American football
player, Derrick Coleman. Coleman is deaf, and in the commercial, he talked
about what it took for him to reach his goal of football success. Speaking over
a montage of football scenes, Coleman said this:

They
told me it couldn’t be done. That I was a lost cause. Kids were afraid to play
with me. I was picked on… and picked last. Coaches didn’t know how to talk to
me. They gave up on me, told me I should just quit. But I’ve been deaf since I
was three – so I didn’t listen.

For the
record, Coleman was not drafted by any NFL team out of college. But then he signed
as a free agent after the 2011 season. He became the first deaf NFL offensive
player in 2012, and won Super Bowl 48 at the end of the 2013 season. As of the
start of the current season, he has two more NFL touchdowns than I do.

Sometimes,
all of us need to refuse to listen. Achieving community with Gd is hard – but
even if we have yet to achieve it today, or ever, this Yom Kippur isn’t
over. Coleman concludes by saying, “Now I’m here, with a lot of fans in the
NFL cheering me on. And I can hear them all.” May we merit Coleman’s level
of success in our Yom Kippur, and may HaShem hear us all.

4 comments:

I realize that there have to be much better quality measures for Musaf than its length. However anyone who has experienced lengthy, unmusical, unmoving arias by not-so-great chazanim, when time stands still, might sympathize a little with the time clock folks..

Both iterations of this derashah are great. Trying to combine the 2 might make it too long, but the re-write removes 2 parts I really like---the young rabbi's blog and R' Korobkin's listing of how various individuals find Gd. However, this first version doesn't include Shir HaShirim / Ki Anu Amecha, the Kuzari's grapevine metaphor, and the expansion on the negative impact of peer pressure.

In a recent sermon, my Rabbi expanded on a Yogi-ism which reflects a little on the young rabbi's blog: “We're lost, but we're making great time.” In other words, how often is our davening mostly rote and limited in meaning while we watch the clock?